In Attacking ‘Uncertainty,’ King County Climate Lawsuit Undermines Fellow Litigants

Last week King County, Washington, became the latest municipality to sue the oil and gas industry in an effort to extract monetary damages for climate change. Like San Francisco, Oakland, and New York City, King County hired the Seattle-based plaintiffs’ firm Hagens Berman to represent it. Curiously, even after facing heavy skepticism and criticism of its past lawsuits, Hagens Berman doubled down on some of its weakest arguments, and in doing so, may have thrown its fellow plaintiffs under the bus.